D&D 4E Thing I thought 4e did better: Monsters

[CapnZapp]

That's why it makes no sense, in the 4e context, to ask "Why are black dragons like this?"; or to conjecture about how many hit points an ogre "ought" to have. The stats are intended as a producer of the fiction; not as a product or record or model of it. If you want different fiction, you change the stats! It's fiction first, mechanics second. (Which I think is fairly close to how Chainmail and OD&D were designed, but different from later AD&D and very different from 3E.)

You might not like it, but the fact is that a sizeable portion of the userbase wants their game to tell them how the world works.

Denying it won't change that.

I hear so many people making self-assured statements of this edition, or that, and always ask myself: is that how people want it to be, or because it really is that way.

Saying that it "makes no sense" to want the stats to describe the world is hugely insensitive to the wishes of that sizeable portion of the userbase. It comes very close to writing their way of playing off as badwrongfun, frankly.

What really makes no sense is to compartmentalize off different editions like that. Oh, so you're playing this way? Then you can use editions M and N but don't try to use X or Y, because they way you play "makes no sense" in those latter editions.

Puleeze...

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Sure, if you deny a basic premise of 4e's damage mechanics - that bleeding occurs when the "bloodied" state is incurred - then you won't like a mechanic that links having blood drip on you to having bloodied your enemy! But the answer to your question is no mystery - you answered it yourself!

OK, but all I find in the PHB about bloodied is that it is the point that you are at half hit points and some abilities may be triggered by it. I don't see anything that indicates that it actually describes what it means in the game world, although I seem to remember something along the lines that it is when you can visibly see that the creature is suffering, etc. The idea that being bloodied means that blood is spraying everywhere doesn't fit my concept of what combat looks like, particularly when all the damage has been bludgeoning, or psychic for example.

This is something that 4e leaves to GM adjudication. And, as [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] pointed out, by default most swords used by PCs to stab this dragon will be magic.

The GM is of course free to narrate that NPCs who tried to stab the dragon with non-magic swords had their swords corrode. That's just colour.

This is a fundamental change in the game, and forces a change in my world. In my world dragons occasionally attack civilized areas. And armies of non-magical weapon wielding people could possibly kill a dragon, however unlikely. Again, one of the specific things that I consider a bad rule for our campaign. Plus a sword that is damaged and or broken is not color, it's a big deal if that's your only weapon.

Why does the dragon breathe when it starts bleeding? Because it's now really angry! It's a pacing mechanic - it helps express, at the table and in the course of resolution, the story of the dragon's anger.

As I stated, I get that this is what people tell me. But why is it restricted to only this action, and also that the rule now forces the fiction - now it's angry. What if it's worried and decides to launch into the air out of reach. Of course you'll say I have the option to do that, but I'll cover that in a moment...

Your question about the tail sits oddly with your preference for legendary actions, because they exhibit the same property: the dragon can only make a wing attack off turn; and the more enemies there are, the more attacks the dragon can make (and the more Perception checks it can make!). These are all mechanisms for managing pacing and action economy. They're are not mechanical representations of dragon biology.

I like legendary actions, I didn't say I always liked how they were implemented. In 4e the stat block lists triggers - that is something that presumably causes one of the listed actions automatically. Again, forcing my fiction. Legendary actions are extra actions that can be taken any time that the dragon desires, out of turn. That's a much more elegant solution to me.

The specific approach, such as adding abilities like a tail sweep that isn't a possible part of its regular action doesn't make much sense. But the framework is there, and again, I like the framework of legendary actions better than triggers.

(I'll bracket the issue of Action Recovery, which is standard in MV dragons.)

It's not a "limitation" - it's about providing a particular experience at the table. The game tends to assume that a fight with a dragon will be a fairly big deal, and that there won't be a lot of repeats. The abilities are intended to help each of those fights to have a distinctive, memorable feel. So it's a mistake to infer from the allocation of abilities to some sort of conjecture about "dragon biology".

Any dragon can fly and attack. But creatures with a fly-by attack ability will be particularly noteworthy for their flying by and attacking. That will be part of the experience of fighting them.

Within the context of 4e this questio makes no sense. Hit points aren't a property of ogres (like their height, weight, or hair colour). They're an element of monster stat blocks, and serve as a marker for the degree of staying power this creature has in combat.

So the GM (i) has to decide what degree of staying power a creature should have; and the (ii) has to assign hit points. 4e has fairly intricate advice on how to move from (i) to (ii), based on its hp/level charts and its categories of standard, elite, solo, etc. The decison at (i), though, can be decided either by accepting the default suggestions (by working from the MM) or by making one's own decision about pacing, genre considerations, etc.

Once again, a fundamental change in the way the game works. This is one of the biggest ones that predicated bounded accuracy. Because a bear is a bear is a bear. Sure you can have a juvenile bear, or an adult, or even an elderly bear. There will be some variation between one individual and another. But for a bear to be scaled up simply to be a reasonably balanced encounter for high-level PCs, is now capable of wandering through the village and causing the damage to said village of a small giant.

As Neonchameleon explained, in 4e if you don't want your black dragon to be an instinctive devourer, then you change the statblock. The game is predicated on the idea that the function of the mechanics is to produce the desired experience in play, including the desired fiction. If you want different fiction, you change the mechanics!

For instance, the only time I used a black dragon in 4e was a young one using the MM (not the MV stats). [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] described it as anaemic, but for me it worked well, and it's darkness ability generated the sort of play experience I wsa hoping for. Likewise I've had good play experiences with wraiths (a monster many people hate because they are insubstantial - half damage - and cause weakness - more half damage).

But if I wanted a different play experience, I would change things. I do this all the time in 4e - change stat blocks to help ensure that the creature, in play, will be as I envisage it and want it to be in the fiction.

That's why it makes no sense, in the 4e context, to ask "Why are black dragons like this?"; or to conjecture about how many hit points an ogre "ought" to have. The stats are intended as a producer of the fiction; not as a product or record or model of it. If you want different fiction, you change the stats! It's fiction first, mechanics second. (Which I think is fairly close to how Chainmail and OD&D were designed, but different from later AD&D and very different from 3E.)

I'll start with it's intended as a producer of the fiction. I have stated repeatedly that's exactly what I don't want. I want the rules to adjudicate the fiction, not create it.

You also state "if you want different fiction, you change the mechanics." Something that I also disagree with, the mechanics of the game should remain consistent no matter what. Yes, I advocate altering the mechanics with house rules so the mechanics meet your needs. But after that, they remain the same. Altering stats of a monster is not altering mechanics. It's altering the abilities of the creature.

Your stated approach is the fiction (which I would consider a description of what the creature is - how it looks, how it acts, how it fits the world, etc.) and mechanics second. In the context of the abilities of a monster I think rather than mechanics, statistics is more appropriate.

So your stated approach is the envision what you want the dragon to be like, then select the abilities. This appears to be a direct contradiction of the design advice given in the DMG (see below) where the "what the creature is like" is the last step of the process, after you've determined all of its combat-oriented abilities.

So altering monsters to suit your needs or tastes is not edition specific. You state that 4e is designed to only tell you about the combat info in the stat blocks, leaving the rest to the DM. For any other edition (and really 4e) the assumption and design intent is that everything you need is in the core books. If you want to design your own campaign, modify monsters, etc. that's fine, and to a large degree encouraged. But you don't have to.

Here's what the DMG has to say about it:

"The Monster Manual provides hundreds of enemies for your adventures, but they aren’t all that’s available. You can customize existing monsters to increase their utility, making them stronger, weaker, or just different. Whether you want to bump an ogre up a few levels or turn it into an elite berserker, this section gives you the tools you need to tinker with monsters. You’ll also find rules for adding a class to a monster, mining the Player’s Handbook for combat powers. You can use several methods to adjust an existing monster: change its level, give it equipment, alter its appearance and behavior, and apply a template. Each of these approaches is discussed below."

In the entire chapter, this is what it says about non-combat stuff:

"Cosmetic Changes
The characters are delving into the jungle-covered ruins of an ancient city now haunted by the yuan-ti. There they discover strange arboreal humanoids with long arms that swoop into battle on the backs of giant wasps. What are these mysterious beings? This technique is useful for keeping players on their toes even when they know the Monster Manual backward and forward. Use the statistics of a given monster but completely alter its appearance when you describe it to the players. You can make minor changes to its powers as well, altering damage types or changing details of weapons (lashing tentacles become a whipping tail, for example)."

Under "Designing Monsters" it would appear to me that the intended design process is "mechanics (stats) first, fiction second":

"Following these steps won’t result in a fully designed and developed monster, but they’ll provide a good approximation.
1. Choose Level. The level of the monster determines its key statistics, including defenses, attack bonuses, and hit points.
2. Choose Role. A monster’s role suggests the kinds of powers it uses in combat. Chapter 4 describes monster roles more fully, and the Monster Statistics by Role table on this page shows how a monster’s role influences the statistics and powers you give it.
3. Determine Ability Scores. It’s helpful to think of ability scores in pairs, each pair corresponding to one of the three defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, and Will). Ability scores also help determine the monster’s attack bonuses, ability and skill checks, and Armor Class. On average, the highest ability score of a pair is equal to 13 + one-half the monster’s level. For example, the target score for an 8th-level monster is 17 (13 + 4). However, set the ability that governs the monster’s primary attacks to be 3 higher, or 16 + one-half the monster’s level. An 8th-level monster that relies on melee attacks should have a Strength of 20.
4. Determine Hit Points. Level and role determine hit points. The monster gains a flat number of hit points at each level, just as characters do. Use the Monster Statistics by Role table to set hit points.
5. Calculate Armor Class. A monster’s Armor Class is based on its level and role. Average AC is equal to 14 + the monster’s level, but some roles alter this target number, as shown in the table.
6. Calculate Other Defenses. A monster’s level determines its defenses. A given defense based on an average ability score is equal to 12 + the monster’s level. For every 2 points the ability score varies from the average, adjust the defense by +1 (if higher) or –1 (if lower).
7. Choose Powers. The most complex part of monster creation is creating powers for the monster. For inspiration, check the powers for creatures in the Monster Manual. That book has a list of monsters by level and role, so you can quickly look up other creatures that are similar to your new monster. Then either choose some powers that seem right, modifying them as needed, or create new ones of comparable effect. A monster needs a basic attack, which can be melee or ranged and is usable at will; some kinds of monsters might have a second basic attack. Then add one encounter power or rechargeable power per tier (one at heroic, two at paragon, three at epic).
8. Calculate Attack Bonus. The monster’s attack bonus is a function of its level and role. Powers that target AC typically have a higher attack bonus than those that target other defenses.
9. Set Damage for Attacks: Use the Damage by Level table to set damage for the monster’s attacks. Most at-will attacks should use the medium normal damage shown on the table. For attacks against multiple targets, the melee attacks of artillery monsters, and controller attacks that also include significant control functions, use the low normal damage column. For attacks that have low accuracy (including brute attacks) and the high-damage attacks of lurker monsters, use the high normal damage column. Use the limited damage expressions for powers the monster can use only once or twice a fight—powers that have encounter recharge or recharge rolls.
10. Additional Details. Monster design doesn’t stop once you’ve done all the math. Add flavor, appearance, and tactics to round out your creation."

This process starts with aspects that don't define the creature at all. In other words it's basically saying: I need a level 5 creature that is a brute, and needs to be strong, you calculate hit points and AC (which is based on armor and role, so at this stage it could be an animated cotton ball or an animated rock and still have the same AC because it apparently has nothing to do with what the creature is, or its natural defenses, etc.), add defenses, and then powers.

Now choosing powers probably requires some idea of what the heck you are attempting to create, but until this point it doesn't make any difference what the monster is, according to this design approach. Then we're back to attack bonuses and damage, which don't have anything to do with what it is again. We haven't defined the actual attacks yet, just the impact they'll have in combat.

Finally we get to step 10, where we actually decide what the heck it is. Presumably this will help define what the attacks are the have the bonus and damage determined in steps 8 and 9. This design process is entirely mechanics (or stats) first, then fiction. There is not a single instruction before this point that recommends that you decide what the monster is. And step 10 even acknowledges that the prior steps have been all math.

As a published game, somebody who has never played before should be able to pick up the books and play without being required to provide half of the details of the monsters. And that's generally how things will be played. An objection that [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] had about 3e stat blocks is that they cross referenced existing material. A common publishing method usually related more to economics of printing than a design decision. Yet then he and you infer that the MM in 4e only provides the combat stuff, and the rest isn't documented anywhere. That doesn't make any sense to me.

So say you're not new to D&D, you're like me. Who is used to 3+ prior editions where the information in the MM is essentially complete (cross-reference or not). That includes things like ecology, numbers appearing, flavor text (and the trend back then was to cover the flavor text quite a bit, including spewing the "Ecology of" series of articles in Dragon magazine). What do I see in 4e design? Combat, combat, and more combat. The monster stats are all combat. The instructions for building a monster is 9 steps of building combat stats, then two sentences to "add flavor, appearance, and tactics to round out your creation."

The 10 steps of designing monsters presents what the designers feel is most important in designing a monster. Nine steps of combat oriented design is a pretty clear intent.

Compare to the 3.5e approach:
"The Monster's Concept
Before you begin assigning statistics and other particulars, take some time to think about the basic nature, or concept, of your monster.
Think of the following when working on your concept:
-What do you expect the creature to do in the game? (Is it a friend or foe of the PCs? Does it depend primarily on physical or mental abilities? Is it meant to be encountered once or on a recurring basis?
-Where does it live? (A monster that lives underground may have characteristics not shared by monsters that inhabit the wilderness and vice versa.)
-How does it live? (Is it a predator that relies on its own strength and speed, or is it intelligent enough to get other creatures to do its bidding?)
-Does it have any particular enemies or favorite prey?
After you have an idea of what your monster is about, you'll have a much easier time making your creature's type, ability scores, feats, skills, and special powers to fit your concept. It's okay to model your monster on a creature that's already in the game-you'll have less work to do and your monster will be easier to use. You'll find that a short menu of special abilities tightly wedded to your concept makes the best monster, and it makes the monster much easier to use."

2e approached it with guidance that covers combat and other options in a brief introduction, and then goes through the design process in the same order that things are presented in the stat block (which is not alphabetical, but seems to have been organized in an order that makes sense for use of the monster): Climate (where it notes that only tool-making creatures will be found in every climate); Frequency ("Most monsters avoid settled areas..."); Organization ("Give a lot of thought to this entry..."; Activity Cycle; Diet; Intelligence; Treasure; Alignment; No. Appearing; and then Combat statistics. It also includes appearance, habitat/society, and ecology entries among others. While stats like the habitat/society in particular are things that I think are best covered in specific settings, the point is that the monster design was more wholistic, not centered or focused on just combat. There aren't many guidelines here, but the approach is clearly different.

While combat abilities certainly enter the design process, this approach has a much broader look at the creature itself - where and how it lives, and typical enemies and prey. These are all pointing more to how it fits in the world than whether it will be "interesting in combat" to the players.

Perhaps I misread the intentions of 4e monsters and their design, particularly in the context of how the rules seem to be very combat oriented in general. But starting on the first monster of the 4e MM - an aboleth. What is it? "ABOLETHS ARE HULKING AMPHIBIOUS CREATURES that hail from the Far Realm, a distant and unfathomable plane. They live in the Underdark, swimming through drowned crannies or creeping through lightless tunnels and leaving trails of slimy mucus in their wake. Malevolent and vile, aboleths bend humanoid creatures to their will, and more powerful aboleths can transform their minions into slimy horrors."

That's the extent of the description. Nothing else, not even what they look like (presumably the assumption is that the picture takes care of that). The aboleth lore section covers a tiny bit more. Otherwise it's nothing but stat blocks (which you say are designed primarily for combat use) and combat tactics.

Again, all I'm saying, is that I personally don't like the monster design approach in 4e. My perception is that the design process is reversed, focusing on combat first, putting more weight on things that make them interesting and or different in combat, and very little that concerns the world, and how the creatures fit within the world. It actually reminds me of early D&D approaches, where there are dungeons full of monsters in their rooms, without any consideration of how they get food, much less why natural enemies don't care that they are living just down the hall. Gygaxian ecology followed, then what I'll call Greenwood ecology, with the "Ecology of the..." series in Dragon (I think he as the original author of the first and many of those). Obviously, outside of D&D there were many other games that presented things in this context, ICE MERP/Rolemaster comes to mind.

I'm not debating the merits, whether one is better than the other. Nor am I debating what a creative DM can do with the rules. Just my personal preference to the design approach.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Emphasis mine. 4e is not unique in this approach. This is completely valid in 5e as well (an I would imagine in all versions, but I have only played 1e, 4e, and 5e).

It's the 3.X family that really ties you down. The most egregious example that springs to mind is that in 3.X the Construct type of monsters are immune to critical hits and thus precision damage. So you can't use precision damage to take apart a clockwork monster.

As we picked through rules we liked, I compiled them all on the computer, with modifications and corrections to make them work together better. Probably 90% of this is still published D&D. When 3e came about, other than the shift to the d20 mechanic, it was a lot like what we had compiled already. Cleaning up the rule system considerably. We continued to tweak, but now it was more about reigning in changes to maintain consistency in our world.

3.X worked as a game if you treated it as a continuation and rationalisation of what had gone before and let the assumptions built in by Gygax do the heavy lifting. Where it failed was when it was taken on its own terms and attempting to be used as a simulationist tool for worldbuilding. Come in with a 1e or 2e mentality it works in the same way that Unearthed Arcana works.

When 4e came out we were excited and started the same process. But the math was all different. Spellcasting as we knew it was gone (and that is a major part of our campaign). Magic item distribution was different. Monsters lost abilities or had new abilities. PCs had a slew of new abilities. And combat became even more complicated and mini dependent when we were already shifting the other way. Pathfinder was an option, but the reality was that we didn't see a point. We had our D&D game, our campaign world. We didn't need a new campaign world, and the rules themselves were virtually identical. We've rarely added new PC races or classes, so that appeal wasn't there either.

We have no problem with AC and hp, just added an additional way to track long term injuries. But 5e gave us the Exhaustion Track. We steal that, rename it the Condition track, and use it for fatigue, combat fatigue, exhaustion, disease, injuries, poison, aging, etc.

You've just reverse engineered what was a great and underused tool in 4e

One of the biggest strengths of D&D is how easy it is to modify.

Compared to most of the other RPGs I couldn't disagree more.

Back in 2e this was made very evident by the slew of campaign settings released.

And here I found the opposite. The slew of campaign settings released only showed how bad D&D was for modifying because of the way it's all kludged together into something that works despite the aesthetics. Starting with Dragonlance and the simple removal of clerics meaning that until they turned up you needed things like the Obscure Death Rule. Then moving on to e.g. Planescape and the way you needed to track how far you were from your home plane. For me the whole thing feels like nails on a chalkboard.

Part of it is also it's what I know best. For example, I know Microsoft Word very well. I do things in Word that would theoretically be easier in Excel, Publisher, or other software, but because I know how to use Word better, that's what I use. And I can get things done much quicker that way, just because of what I know.

And this is a difference of approach. I'll use whatever software I think helps the most. And I'll wince whenever I see someone try and create a spreadsheet in Word, or worse yet, an "Excel Database". I'm the same way with gaming systems.

This quote perhaps highlights a bit of the difference. It's hard to tell because perhaps you approach it similarly and are just phrasing it in a way that makes me think otherwise. But it seems like you are starting with how you want the monster to behave. While that does have some impact in the design, I start with what the monster is

And my answer to that is "You are what you do". It's a strong philosophical statement and one that can be argued but it means that the questions I start is "Why is something there, what is it, and what is it doing?" A slight difference from your approach - but at many levels only a slight one. And "What is it doing" is not based round "How does it fight". It's "What is it doing there? How and why did it get there?"

There are however two core differences between how you do this in 4e and most other editions of D&D:

1. Anything that happens "offscreen" is going to be handled by DM fiat anyway. There is no need to have game mechanics for this.
2. Instead of flipping through the index to see how a wizard would do things and then using that spell you simply write down what you think it should do, using 4e mechanics as a markup language.

Monster design to me is part of the world-building process. "How does it fit in the world?" and not "will this make an interesting combat?"

Me too. But making the world an interesting place is also part of the world-building process.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I remember once posting on a houseruling thread examples of monsters I had come up with. At least one other poster had the same response as you have expressed in this thread - that's not houseruling, it's just GMing!

I personally don't care where that line is drawn, but your thought is certainly clear to me.

Overall I agree, but in AL adventures, or other organized play, I believe you pretty much have to stick to the monsters as written in terms of stats.

 

[guachi]

I'm not certain if you can increase or decrease monster hp and damage in AL play (probably...) but the most common change is to add or subtract monsters.

In other words - Yes, I believe you have to pretty much stick to the monster as written.

 

[pemerton]

Irregardless of whether that is the way 4e expects a GM to engage in world building (and again why is this a 4e specific thing when rule zero exists in every edition) it is still the use of DM fiat.

Only in the sense that any world building - any decision about the content of the fiction that is not a result of a resolution procedure - is fiat.

But not in the sense of a departure or override of a resolution procedure that would normally apply.

I am looking in my 4e DMG right now under "Customizing Monsters" and I see the following methods... change it's level, give it equipment, alter it's appearance or behavior and apply a template.

Yes. That is about applying changes to a stat block. Not about establishing backstory that happens to involve a monster - like a swamp that was magically created by a black dragon.

Where exactly is this ethos of just give the monster whatever you deem it needs espoused in the rulebooks? And again how is this different from rule zero in any edition.

It is not about "giving a monster whatever you deem it needs". To make it true that, in the gameworld, the black dragon corrupted a once crystal-clear pond into a stagnant bog does not require me to "give" the black dragon anything. It just requires me to imagine (and, perhaps, write down) that foregoing story.

Much the same as writing that the prince fell in love with his mother's handmaiden doesn't require me to "give" the prince anything (like a "vulnerabiity to falling in love with handmaidens" entry in his statblock).

As to where this is set out: for me, it was made clear in Worlds & Monsters (pages 14, 18):

When the world team started talking about the D&D world . . . [w]e proposed D&D environments containing fantastic elements alongside more mundane features. These could include an island of rock perched atop a constant waterspout of titanic size, a river of lava that never cools or stops flowing, a grassy plane dotted with monolithic pillars that seemingly dropped from the skies, or a city of floating towers borne up by ancient magic. . . .

Magic permeates the planes and the world in the same way that air fills the sky. Normal people . . . benefit from their hedge mage's ability to ward of evil spirits . . . and their priest's capacity to bless crops.​

Magic permeates the world and creates fantastic environments. Hedge mages ward of evil spirits; priests bless crops. These aren't elements of stat blocks: they're elements of worldbuilding, and of establishing the backstory for the campaign. In the same vein, I don't a stat block to tell me that a black dragon can corrupt the water it dwells in: the MM (pp 75-6) tells me that it is a magical beast that breathes caustic green acid and is "naturally drawn to places where the Shadowfell's influence is strong." The fiction of the black dragon supports the fiction of its capacity, indeed its inevitable tendency, to corrupt water. It doesn't need a stat block.

(And to preempt a possible question: if a scneario involved the PCs protecting a pool from a black dragon's corruption, or reversing that corruption, the non-combat components off that would be a skill challenge. And skill challenges don't involve any opposed checks or action declarations by the GM. The GM just has to narrate the adversity in fictional terms; all the mechanical resolution is player side.)

You might not like it, but the fact is that a sizeable portion of the userbase wants their game to tell them how the world works.

Denying it won't change that.

Who's denying it? It's obvious, and was a recurrent criticism of 4e.

Saying that it "makes no sense" to want the stats to describe the world is hugely insensitive to the wishes of that sizeable portion of the userbase.

No. It's a statement of fact about 4e. (Hence my phrase "in the 4e context".)

4e won't tell you that an ogre has d8 HD - it gives you (in the MM) an 11th and 16th level ogre minion, two 8th level ogres, and an 11th level elite. Which of these a GM wants to use (if any - maybe s/he wants to level some up or down) is up to the GM, based on the fiction s/he is aiming for.

It comes very close to writing their way of playing off as badwrongfun, frankly.

It's advice that, if they want that sort of game, they shoudn't play 4e. Because 4e won't deliver it by default, and if you try and get that sort out of 4e in any event you will have to fight the system at just about every point.

Advising someone who wants the mechanics to tell them how the world works that they probalby should avoid FATE or Dungeonworld isn't criticising their taste. It's taking it seriously!

But the flipside is that someone with those preferences who then criticises FATE or DW for not satsifying them is probably missing the point of those systems.

Likewise with 4e. It's designed to work a certain way, and if you don't want to run that sort of game it probably isn't for you. That doesn't mean it's badly designed. It's not as if, in a 4e game, there's no explanation for why the fiction is at is. But that explanation is in further fictional terms, not mechanical ones. It's a fiction-first system.

What really makes no sense is to compartmentalize off different editions like that. Oh, so you're playing this way? Then you can use editions M and N but don't try to use X or Y, because they way you play "makes no sense" in those latter editions.

Well, I think it's handy to note what editions support what sort of play. There's a reason I'll play AD&D or 4e, but not 2nd ed or 3E. Because the first two can give me a play experience I want, and the latter two generally can't.

(And if you think there's no difference between editions, then how do you explain all those people who don't like 4e? Of which I thought you were one!)

 

[dave2008]

It's the 3.X family that really ties you down. The most egregious example that springs to mind is that in 3.X the Construct type of monsters are immune to critical hits and thus precision damage. So you can't use precision damage to take apart a clockwork monster.

Well I have no idea what precision damage is so you have me there! Maybe 3e was uniquely difficult to modify, but it seems the OGL at least open it up for a lot of people to try.

Compared to most of the other RPGs I couldn't disagree more.

Can you explain how other RPGs are easier to modify? I really only have experience in Call of Cthulhu, Conan, and D&D and of those three D&D has been bar far the easiest for me to modify. But that really comes down to my better knowledge and system mastery of D&D. That being said, I didn't see anything in Conan or Call of Cthulhu that would make them any easier to modify.

 

[pemerton]

OK, but all I find in the PHB about bloodied is that it is the point that you are at half hit points and some abilities may be triggered by it. I don't see anything that indicates that it actually describes what it means in the game world

I think that they were relying on the meaning of the word bloodied: covered or stained with blood.

The rules tell you that a creature becomes bloodied, ie covered or stained with blood, when s/he drops below half hp.

Instead of using the adjective "bloodied" and making this an official rule, 5e has a sidebar suggesting the same thing as a narration technique for hp loss.

The idea that being bloodied means that blood is spraying everywhere doesn't fit my concept of what combat looks like, particularly when all the damage has been bludgeoning, or psychic for example.

Being "stained with blood" doesn't entail that blood is spraying everywhere.

Some of the usage examples from dictionary.com make the point:

Her hair was loose and over her eyes, her clenched hands all bloodied about her throat.

Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened.​

I have no problem, personally, with blows from a mace making someone bleed. As far as psychic damage is concerned, I often follow the X-Men trope and describe bleeding from the ears.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

You've just reverse engineered what was a great and underused tool in 4e

As I've said, from a game design I do think 4e has a lot of strengths. Still not a game I prefer to play, but I know there are a number of concepts pulled from 4e and implemented on a more traditional D&D ruleset.

And here I found the opposite. The slew of campaign settings released only showed how bad D&D was for modifying because of the way it's all kludged together into something that works despite the aesthetics. Starting with Dragonlance and the simple removal of clerics meaning that until they turned up you needed things like the Obscure Death Rule. Then moving on to e.g. Planescape and the way you needed to track how far you were from your home plane. For me the whole thing feels like nails on a chalkboard.

And this is a difference of approach. I'll use whatever software I think helps the most. And I'll wince whenever I see someone try and create a spreadsheet in Word, or worse yet, an "Excel Database". I'm the same way with gaming systems.

Yep, I'm a "get the job done" type. So if a flat Excel Database will do the trick, then I won't worry about designing an Access or SQL database. If it requires that complexity, then I will. But again, a large part of this is my own personal knowledge. Time is often a factor at play, and when that's the case my only concern is get the right result, and within the deadline.

With something like a game system, an imperfect system that we all know how to play (and want to play) works better than one that the rest of the players have no interest in learning.

And my answer to that is "You are what you do". It's a strong philosophical statement and one that can be argued but it means that the questions I start is "Why is something there, what is it, and what is it doing?" A slight difference from your approach - but at many levels only a slight one. And "What is it doing" is not based round "How does it fight". It's "What is it doing there? How and why did it get there?"

You know it's funny, because one of the things that I mention to people quite frequently is that if you ask somebody, "what do you do?" they'll almost always answer with their job. You job typically occupies more of your "what you do" time than anything else. Except that I find my job often defines who I am the least.

There are however two core differences between how you do this in 4e and most other editions of D&D:

1. Anything that happens "offscreen" is going to be handled by DM fiat anyway. There is no need to have game mechanics for this.
2. Instead of flipping through the index to see how a wizard would do things and then using that spell you simply write down what you think it should do, using 4e mechanics as a markup language.

Me too. But making the world an interesting place is also part of the world-building process.

Except that the offscreen stuff often works better with rules. For example, we have rules for researching spells, crafting magic items, etc. and these take a long time. How long is partially determined by the rules we have in place. So while a player is actively using one character, their other characters are offscreen, but taking advantage of these rules. There is no DM fiat in those cases, but the rules allow us to handle the offscreen stuff very quickly from a mechanical standpoint, and helps not only add interest, but provide actual decision points to. For example, at a following session a different group of characters is heading out to explore something, and a player with a wizard has to determine whether he wants to put his research on hold and head out, or keep up with his research, in which case the player will use one of their other characters.

5e has downtime rules that can be used in place of actually playing out the scenes, if the players and DM determine that it's a better approach for that point in time.

As for "flipping through the index" if you're familiar with the game it is a relatively trivial process to either know or look up what a spell does. With digital tools, spell cards, and a bit of DM prep based on your own personal needs, it doesn't take much to make that work. I don't entirely disagree, the same way that the in-line stat blocks in adventures evolved. But a great many of those decisions are entirely because of publishing restrictions, and if you have x-number of pages available, then you have a choice of more content, or duplicate text.

Yes, making the world interesting is part of the world-building process. We just find different things interesting than you perhaps?

 

[pemerton]

Can you explain how other RPGs are easier to modify?

I don't know what [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has in mind, but there are some RPG systems that are very flexible and/or versatile compared to D&D.

For instance, to take CoC: a version of that system (BRP) has been used for fantasy (RQ, Stormbringer) and for modern horror (CoC). If you've played one of those games, you can sit down at a table to play any of them (or Pendragon, for that matter; at least in my experience). It's simple and intituive, because all you need is a list of skills with numbers next to them, and the bigger the number the better you are.

D&D, though, uses classes and levels, which fit oddly, at best, into non-fantasy contexts; uses combat mechanics that are hard to adapt to modern play (what happens in the fiction when my PC with 50 hp is hit by a bullet for 8 hp of damage - did I really just get shot but not even slow down?); uses XP progression that is not easily adapted to non-fantasy contexts (because based primarily on combat victories and in earlier versions on what, in a non-fantasy context, can only be called theft); etc.

Even within the fantasy genre, D&D has constrains of the sort Neonchameleon pointed out: it needs some sort of healing mechanic (because the way combat works, it emphases soaking damage as much as, if not more than, avoiding being hit); it bases its magic use around discrete game elements that correspond to discrete story elements, which is a very distinctive flavour of magic; etc.

Even think about the impact hit points have on the system: we have a high level spell called Regeneration, but by the default combat rules the only way someone can be maimed is by way of a magical weapon, and there is no system (beyond ad hoc rulings) for adjudicating what happens to a character whose hand is cut off (whether in a trap, as a punishment, or whatever). I can't think of another fantasy game that has the same problem, that it's rules for suffering damage in combat don't contain, within themselves, a way of capturing such a state of affairs in mechanical terms

None of the above is a criticism of D&D (on my part, at least). I also GM Burning Wheel, and it's not very flexible either - it's very specificially designed to deliver a particular sort of play experience within a particular, fairly narrow, genre window.

But when I think D&D, I don't think flexible.